Capturing Trains in Motion

Additional context from our TechCrunch demo

Last week, our co-founders Sebastian Bauer and Tristan Swedish shared some additional details about Ubicept’s vision and technology with TechCrunch (“Everything you know about computer vision may soon be wrong”). If you haven’t checked it out, please do!

In this blog post, we wanted to provide some more context on a demo that we put together for the article:

Here at Ubicept, one of our primary goals is to make the world a safer place by enhancing the perception capabilities of automated systems. We’ve been following the news about the tragic outcomes of train derailments. While reducing them involves many factors unrelated to computer vision—or even technology—we wanted to explore how our technology could help.

Conventional cameras have difficulty capturing motion in all but the brightest light, making it challenging to use them for inspection without specialized illumination. In contrast, the Ubicept solution can achieve exceptional performance levels with minimal setup.

We showed this by bringing our evaluation kit to a subway station during a lunch break and setting it up on a bench. With nothing more than this, we were able to capture enough detail to see scratches on the body:

Of course, minor cosmetic imperfections are not safety issues, but consider the benefits of turning the lens towards wheels (from a static position) or tracks (from the train itself).

Our technology also allows for the generation of high-resolution static panoramas so that photo-based (rather than video-based) inspection algorithms can be applied:

We're excited to continue pushing the boundaries of what's possible with the Ubicept solution and we can't wait to see what the future holds. Please stay tuned for more updates and exciting developments from our team!